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Norden Bombsight

More Accurate than a Human
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An analog computer that calculated the trajectory of the bomb, calculating crosswind, altitude, and airspeed, and then released the bomb. This sight was more accurate than a human bombardier, especially in high-altitude precision bombing from a plane moving over 300 feet per second. The Norden Bombsight was a closely guarded secret that required a secure area for its storage when not in use for training. They were stored in a wooden building that contained five or six concrete vaults.

Updated October 2024
Posted December 2023

Norden Bombsight
Norden Bombsight
1920-1945
Dutch immigrant Carl Norden designed bombsights for the US Navy in the 1920s. It includes an analog computer that calculated the trajectory of the bomb, calculating crosswind, altitude, and airspeed, and then released the bomb. This computer was more accurate than a human bombardier, especially in high-altitude precision bombing from a plane moving over 300 feet per second.

Norden Bombsight

Norden Bombsight

WIKIPEDIAThe Norden Mk. XV
Norden M Series
Bombsight that was used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars. It was an early tachometric design that directly measured the aircraft's ground speed and direction, which older bombsights could only estimate with lengthy manual procedures. The Norden further improved on older designs by using an analog computer that continuously recalculated the bomb's impact point based on changing flight conditions, and an autopilot that reacted quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects. Together, these features promised unprecedented accuracy for daytime bombing from high altitudes.

During prewar testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP) of 75 feet, an astonishing performance for that period. This precision would enable direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the USAAF saw it as a means to conduct successful high-altitude bombing. For example, an invasion fleet could be destroyed long before it could reach U.S. shores.

Wikipedia Norden Bombsight

To protect these advantages, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a production effort on a similar scale to the Manhattan Project: the overall cost (both R&D and production) was $1.1 billion, as much as 2/3 of the latter or over a quarter of the production cost of all B-17 bombers. The Norden was not as secret as believed; both the British SABS and German Lotfernrohr 7 worked on similar principles, and details of the Norden had been passed to Germany even before the war started.

Under combat conditions the Norden did not achieve its expected precision, yielding an average CEP in 1943 of 1,200 feet (a CEP of 1200 feet means 50% of all bombs dropped land within 1200 feet of the target), similar to other Allied and German results. Both the Navy and Air Forces had to give up using pinpoint attacks. The Navy turned to dive bombing and skip bombing to attack ships, while the Air Forces developed the lead bomber procedure to improve accuracy, and adopted area bombing techniques for ever-larger groups of aircraft. Nevertheless, the Norden's reputation as a pin-point device endured, due in no small part to Norden's own advertising of the device after secrecy was reduced late in the war.

The Norden saw reduced use in the post–World War II period after radar-based targeting was introduced, but the need for accurate daytime attacks kept it in service, especially during the Korean War. The last combat use of the Norden was in the U.S. Navy's VO-67 squadron, which used it to drop sensors onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1967. The Norden remains one of the best-known bombsights.

Other Wikipedia Citings